


Smart People

by FeathersMcStrange



Category: CSI: NY
Genre: Belonging, Drabble, Feeling torn between two worlds, Gen, Identity Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-07-10 21:27:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7008787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeathersMcStrange/pseuds/FeathersMcStrange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Don Flack isn't a scientist. He's a detective. But to the other detectives, there's no difference. He works with the lab, he's part of the lab. If only Don himself felt that way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smart People

**Author's Note:**

> Part of a series of drabbles based off a prompt list on tumblr found here: http://aromanticgcallen.tumblr.com/post/144666238426/obscure-feelings-drabble-prompt-meme, characters assigned by my lovely friend V
> 
> Prompt: Monachopsis
> 
> Character(s): Don Flack
> 
> See note at bottom for additional warnings.

> **MONACHOPSIS:** The subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place.

New York, New York is a city of smart people. Suits in business meetings and law firms, doctors and bank executives. People with shiny degrees and brains comparable to the average computer's calculating power and knowledge stores. Some of the smartest people in this smart, smart city work with Don Flack, who boasts of a high school degree and a solid understanding of how and when to throw a punch.

It's hard to feel like one of them, those sharp-minded scientists with lab coats and microscopes. Which, Don figures, is because he isn't one of them, not really. Too cop for the CSIs, none of their Latin words or numbered phrases formulas meaning heads or tails to him. Too CSI for the cops on the flip side, defending them when the officers don't like what their Latin words and numbered formulas have to say.

Don hears it every time the science gets inconvenient, ' _just whose side are you on, Flack?_ ' As if there is a side other than the truth to be on, here.

Someone has to bridge the gap, to speak both cop and scientist well enough to translate across the language barrier. Someone has to get them to work together, and someone, this time, is him. There are days Don wonders how any one person can do his job, sometimes it feels like he hardly has time to think.

There are days he thinks about doing something else, just for the chance to be wholly good at something for once. Wholly accepted in it. 

Only ever for a moment, before he remembers where he came from, that this is the only thing he has a shot at being good at. 

It's nice to be recognized for it though, Danny looking at him over a grill out back, saying, "I don't know how you manage both worlds, Don, I don't think I could hack what you do."


End file.
